Sheriff charged after allegedly killing judge in chambers attack caught on camera

Former Kentucky sheriff Shawn “Mickey” Stines was charged Thursday with the death of a judge in his chambers.

A Letcher County grand jury indicted Stines on one count murder of a public official according to a press release issued Thursday by Kentucky Attorney General Russell Coleman’s office. His arraignment is scheduled for noon on Nov. 25, according to online court records.

Stines, 43, was arrested and charged with first-degree murder after authorities said he shot his longtime colleague, U.S. District Judge Kevin Mullins, 54, multiple times on Sept. 19 in an attack caught on surveillance video.

On September 25, Stines pleaded not guilty. In late September, he formally resigned as sheriff after receiving a letter from Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear and Kentucky Solicitor General S. Travis Mayo urging him to do so. Police said he is being held two counties away at the Leslie County Jail.

It’s still unclear what motivated the former sheriff pull the trigger.

Kentucky State Police Detective According to prosecutors, Clayton Stamper testified at a preliminary hearing that the two men were having lunch with a group of people a few hours before the shooting. Louisville Courier Journal.

According to Stamper, Stines tried calling his daughter on his phone and then on Mullins’ phone.

“Our investigators have seized both cellphones and are currently being processed,” Kentucky State Police Trooper Matt Gayheart previously told The Associated Press. Daily mail.

“I was told that the judge made a statement to Mickey about, ‘Do we have to meet privately in my chambers?'” Stamper testified: She reported to the Associated Press.

“It’s possible, but I don’t know for sure,” Stamper said when asked if Stines was motivated to shoot Mullins based on what he saw on the judge’s phone.

“I talked to him, but he didn’t say anything about why it happened,” Stamper said, according to the AP. “But he was calm… He basically just said, ‘Treat me fairly.'”

When Stines was arrested, he allegedly told another officer, “They’re trying to kidnap my wife and kid,” Stamper said.

Days earlier, Stines had been deposed in a lawsuit filed by two women, one of whom alleged that an associate judge forced her to have sex in the same judge’s office where the shooting took place. The woman alleged that the deputy repeatedly sexually assaulted her over a six-month period in exchange for avoiding punishment.

The lawsuit accuses the sheriff of “conscious indifference resulting from his failure to adequately train and supervise” the deputy.

Stines’ defense attorney, Jeremy Bartley, he told People that the shooting “was not planned and took place in the heat of passion.”

“For us, the highest degree of guilt should be manslaughter based on the partial defense of extreme emotional disturbance,” Bartley said.

The Whitesburg shooting shook the community of Letcher County, Kentucky, where Stines was a bailiff at the Mullins Courthouse before becoming sheriff in 2018.

“We are all shocked by this situation,” Garnard Kincer Jr., Mullins’ friend and former Mayor Jenkins, told People magazine. “It practically immobilized us. We just can’t believe this happened.”

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